Neil Patrick Harris: 'We'd Make Very Good Parents'

Despite rumors to the contrary, Neil Patrick Harris, star of How I Met Your Mother and host of this year’s Emmys, says he and partner David Burtka and are not expecting a child – yet.

Still, “We’d make very good parents,” Harris, 36, tells New York Magazine. And they’re already making one very good couple.

“We yin and yang very well,” he tells the magazine. “I’m just bowled over by him. I’m his forever protector, and I’m happiest when he’s happy.”

But coming to terms with his sexuality in Hollywood wasn’t always so easy for the former child star of Doogie Howser, M.D. “I tried … dating different girls, being the funny, witty guy at the party,” he says.

One person that helped inspire him? A gay Real World cast member. Danny Roberts, of The Real World: New Orleans, “was a unique entity at the time, as someone who was seemingly so confident in their own skin,” says Harris.

As host of this year’s Emmy Awards, Harris jokes that he hoped to include the Muppets – specifically Statler and Waldorf up in the balcony – in the opening number. And while that plan didn’t pan out, the actor jokes, with self-mocking air quotes, that he’ll make this year’s show the “classy Emmys.”